A Chickens! Educational Sidebar: NOT 10,000BC

Terror birds (Family: Phorusrhacidae): Giant, flightless carnivorous birds, which stood up to 10 feet high, lived in the Americas (mostly South America) during the Cenozoic. Anything even close to resembling it in the old world died out millions of years ago. It had been previously thought to have existed as recently as 10,000BC in South America but the most recent fossil has been re-dated to around 2 million years ago.

Woolly Mammoths and Mastodons: Mastodons were native to both Eurasia and North America but died out in Eurasia approximately three million years ago and were browsers not grazers like the mammoths. The woolly mammoth (Mammuthus primigenius aka tundra mammoth) was found in North America, Northern Eurasia, and Siberia. They evolved from the steppe mammoth (M.trogontherii) which was 15ft at the shoulder and lived in Northern Eurasia but it was replaced by tundra mammoth about 250,000 years ago. Most mammoth species were no more than 10ft tall at the shoulder max (that's 2 ft taller than my ceiling) and had much smaller ears than modern elephants (closer to 30cm long compared to 6 feet). They began disappearing with the other Pleistocene megafauna about 12,000 years ago, with the last dwelling on islands in the Arctic until as late as 3,000 to 4,000 years ago. They did not (and could not) live in any warm locations such as Africa (besides the long fur, mammoths had a 8cm think layer of blubber beneath their thick skin), although there is some evidence that suggests that Egyptians may have known about them. Also, while the tradition of training elephants may go back some 4 000 years in the Hindu valley, there is no evidence to suggest the taming of elephants or the use of elephants for labour in any way before this time (let alone mammoths!).

Sabre-toothed cats: The most popular sabre-toothed cat was Smilodon (aka the sabre toothed tigre; no close relation to actual tigers). It stood about as tall as a modern lion (but was about twice as heavy, around 400kg) and lived in the Americas.
The lesser known Homotherium (aka scimitar cat) lived in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas but only survived in the old world until about 30,000 years ago. It was the size of a modern lion and had relatively short upper canines compared to Smilodon. The giant sabre-toothed cat depicted in the movie was at least 2 to 3 times larger than anything that ever existed in real life. Just like this:

Animal Domestication - Horses: As early as 30,000 years ago we see depictions of horses and horse hunting in Paleolithic rock art. In 10,000BC horses were still being hunted for food and in the process of going extinct in the western hemisphere (though there is evidence to suggest that some of the North American horse species migrated to Siberia before this time). The horse may have been domesticated in central Asia as early as 4000BC (around the same time the wheel was invented. Yes, I know the "wheel" existed earlier than that but that was for pottery not transportation), but these may have been merely "tamed" wild horses; the earliest evidence of bit wear dates to around 3500-3000BC; chariots and other material evidence clearly indicate the horse was definitely fully domesticated by 2500 - 2000BC and in common employment throughout Eurasia. Anatomically modern horses (Equus caballus) are a product of selective breeding by humans.

Animal Domestication - Sheep: Sheep were one of the earliest agricultural animals to be domesticated (along with goats), perhaps as early as 9000 years ago (even as early as 10 to 11,000 according to some, soon after agriculture, but that is still only 9000BC at the earliest) in SW Asia. But woolly sheep weren't being selected for until several thousand years later.

Plant domestication: Occurred independently in several major centers around the world. It occurred in the Fertile Crescent region of the Middle East as early as 9000BC. Here we have grains and some legumes like wheat (einkorn and emmer), barley, pea, lentils. Around 8000BC, we see the domestication of Mesoamerican/South American plants like corn, squash, tomato, lima beans, white potato, sweet potato, chili peppers, peanuts, guava, and avocado. These species don't make their way to the old world until the 1500's. So, to sum up, while arguably a case could possibly be made for horticultural cultivation of some transitional domesticate crops in some regions of the Middle East as early as 10,000BC (though there really isn't any evidence for this), these crops would not have included New World domesticates like corn or chili peppers.

Metallurgy: While small amounts of soft natural metals like deposits of gold may have been cold hammered and/or used as decoration as early as the late Paleolithic period (40,000BC), the technology of metallurgy began around 3500 B.C. in the Bronze Age.

Monumental Architecture: The earliest Neolithic townsites date to around 8000BC, actual monumental architecture (except for megaliths) doesn't clearly show up for at least a few thousand years after that.

p.s. Visit some of the other blogs in my blogging community for more angry rantings about 10,000BC here and here.
p.p.s. Another rider to this. I guess the movie isn't so bad because my Mom didn't have to worry about anyone in it, everyone got theirs in the end. In my disapproval of the movie I failed to give extra points for its Mom-friendliness. Let that be a lesson to me. Also, in further defense of the movie, the only thing that actually didn't ever exist were the giant sabre-toothed tigers (of course even though the other things existed, they didn't exist in the same times or places and definitely not in the Old Wold in 10,000BC).